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As the number of Americans with diabetes continues to grow, diabetes drugs have skyrocketed – and so have lawsuits against diabetes drug makers. With the epidemic on the rise, Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) has monitored many law firms soliciting diabetes claimants who have suffered from other ailments as a result of diabetes medications.

In an analysis of legal advertising targeted towards 13 different prescription drugs during the 12 months ended May 2016, we saw a 575 percent surge in the number of mass tort commercials. The largest spike occurred in March when multiple law firms decided to capitalize on a diabetic medication warning issued by the FDA.

An estimated $24 million was spent on mass tort diabetes ads during this time period. The majority of this ($9.4 million) was soliciting patients taking Invokana. CMAG monitored more than 26,000 occurrences of law firms marketing against the drug.

Chatter regarding the potential complications from diabetes drugs also spilled over to social media. In an analysis of 30 diabetes related hashtags on Twitter, we monitored the hashtags #heartfailure and #invokana among the top 10 dominating the conversation.

Diabetes is a growing epidemic in the U.S. Healthcare and pharma marketers have been increasing their investments targeted towards the disease for some time, and now legal advertisers and conversations on social media have followed suit. The growing number of lawsuits and FDA warnings against these drug makers don’t point to signs of this trend slowing down any time soon.